A Vocabulary Lesson Plan or Unit on Goals

This vocabulary lesson plan on goals can stand alone, or it
can be used as part of a unit on willpower and achieving goals. As written, it
is aimed at intermediate students, but with some adaptations it could be used from high beginners to advanced students. (I have taught a similar lesson for mid-low beginners
using picture material-- soccer players scoring a goal,
etc. You could find such a picture on the web, and teach SMART goals to beginners.)

Vocabulary Lesson Plan on
Goal-Setting

a target

Warm up by asking students to write (or illustrate, if you have
some lower level students) one to three goals for the next year, then share
with a partner.

As an introduction, discuss SMART goals (Specific,
Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-limited.) For a discussion with
some language learning goals that might give you ideas, see Learning English
Online.)

For the teacher presentation, briefly discuss and possibly
demonstrate the vocabulary students will need: achievable,
goals, (overcoming) obstacles, specific, and possibly resolutions, as well as some
of the following words.

If you’ll be using Practice with Words for Success
(which also demonstrates some of the vocabulary in its first paragraphs),
consider (depending on the words your students already know): appropriate, attitude,
capability, determination, energy, eventually, inevitable, motivation, priorities,
security, succeed, and successful.

If your students know much of that vocabulary and you need a
little more, you might also use one or both exercises on the page Vocabulary
for Achievement and Goal-Setting and add some of these words: accomplish, achieve,
attain (and/or any of those with –ment), budget, constraint, establish,
financial, identify, incentive, objective, resolution, target.

Then you might watch a brief video on famous failures who
went on to achieve greatness (link on the Words for Success page above) as a
class. In more advanced level classes, have students discuss it with partners
and tell any similar stories they know.

For the practice,
have students read and complete the Words for Success gapfill pdf (in pairs
if you have some lower level students.) (Right click to download it; copy the
first page for your students, then go over the answers as a class.) This lesson
would work well along with practicing the future tense, modals, or
conditionals.

Evaluation or homework for higher level students: Goals
for Success Crossword. (Answers here.) A matching exercise like the
one in Vocabulary for Achievement (which you could copy and paste into a
word processor and then modify) might be easier for lower level students. The
Odd One Out on that page is another possible homework or end-of-class activity.

A Unit on Achieving
Goals

If doing a whole unit on achieving goals, you might start
with the lesson above (SMART Goals, with Vocabulary for Achievement for the additional
vocabulary and practice) but NOT use Words for Success and its vocabulary and
video until a second lesson on failures as stepping stones to success. Then use
Learning from Failure as a reading (possible vocabulary: attained,
benefits, energy, failure, inevitable, rejected, security. successful), watch
the video on famous failures on the Words for Success page, and use the Words for Success pdf to practice. Use the Success Vocabulary Quiz (pdf) as an evaluation.

All three
are interesting, but I would especially recommend the TED talk (fairly easy,
though you may need to explain that marshmallows are a soft white candy) and the
Scientific American article that
gives a very different perspective on the same experiment.

Those
might make one lesson, and the New York
Times article (which is more difficult, but also more goal-oriented) might
make a related lesson, emphasizing how people can use research on willpower to make
it easier to establish healthy habits and stay on track to reach their goals. You
might want to discuss the research but NOT have lower-level students read the
article.

If you do
use the NYT article, I would recommend looking at newsletter 10 in Back
Issues for ideas for introducing ‘willpower’ and a little difficult
vocabulary in the NYT article that you may not want to teach explicitly but
explain so the words won’t hinder your students from understanding the main
points.

I
redesigned the quiz for newsletters 9-10 to just cover important words in these
three sources. If you use all three, you might finish the lessons with the Willpower
Quiz, a gapfill exercise with several paragraphs on the marshmallow
experiments +. (It tests acknowledge, arbitrary, grade, implications,
indicated, outcomes, participants & participation, predictions, principles,
rational, research & researcher.)

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